I paid bills.
I answered messages with little smiling faces.
It simply stopped moving.
Then I started volunteering at the hospital because the first time I saw someone die alone, something in me refused to leave.
I sat with patients whose families lived too far away, or no longer called, or could not bear to come.
I held cups of water.
Read magazines aloud.
Learned which rooms were always cold and which nurses hummed under pressure.
I started volunteering at the hospital.
People called me generous.
They were wrong.
I was hiding in the only place where grief made sense.
Thomas noticed that before I did.
He was 72, with hollow cheeks, a tired smile, and that green backpack always resting beside his foot.
I was hiding in the only place where grief made sense.
Sometimes I found him near the cardiac wing.
